In my last article, I outlined the Product Operating Model from the Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG).

As a reminder, the Product Operating Model is a conceptual model, it is not a methodology, process or framework. It is about moving from output to achieving outcomes, following a set of product-first principles.

In this article, I will share more details regarding the twenty product-first principles.

Product Team Principles

As stated by Marty Cagan, “The most fundamental of all product concepts is the notion of an empowered, cross-functional product team.”.

  1. Empowered with Problems to Solve: Product teams must be given a problem to solve, rather than solutions to build, and, most importantly, are held accountable for the results. They are empowered to make decisions and are not “order-takers”.

  2. Outcomes over Output: Establish outcome-based goals, leveraging Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), which create focus on the priority, promote curiosity and provide relevant context. Outcomes are the results of actions, not features.

  3. Sense of Ownership: Product teams must have the sponsorship and autonomy to come up with the solutions to the problems (Product Discovery), alongside the responsibility to build them (Product Delivery).

  4. Collaboration: Promote respectful discourse, assuming good intentions when challenging ideas or decisions. Encourage a diverse perspective, but when a decision is concluded, ensure total commitment.

Product Strategy Principles

As stated by Marty Cagan, “The product vision is the future you are trying to create and, most importantly, how this vision will improve the lives of your customers.”

  1. Focus: Ensure product teams have the foundations to focus, avoiding distractions that do not support the defined outcome. Be comfortable saying “no”, to promote discipline.

  2. Powered by Insights: Leverage data, feedback and signals to inform strategy, ensuring strong situation awareness. Strategy is discovered, not pre-defined, requiring iteration and continuous improvement.

  3. Transparency: Always start with why, ensuring the relevant context is communicated effectively to key stakeholders, building trust and credibility when making decisions.

  4. Placing Bets: Acknowledge that there may be more than one solution to a given problem, consider multiple product teams with a rapid feedback loop to inform strategy and fail fast where needed.

Product Discovery Principles

Innovation occurs within Product Discovery and is a critical dimension on the road towards a valuable outcome. It is also the dimension that is commonly neglected in the race to start delivering.

  1. Minimise Waste: Accept that failure can be a successful outcome of discovery, acknowledging that the majority (>75%) of ideas will not perform as desired. Attempt to solve every problem with the minimum amount of wasted time and effort.

  2. Assess Product Risks: Every product team should have a common understanding of the risks, covering value, viability, usability, and feasibility.

  3. Embrace Rapid Experimentation: Promote curiosity and empower experimentation with the product team, whilst ensuring the outcome is well-defined and remains relevant. Remove bureaucracy to avoid unnecessary friction, allowing teams to fail fast.

  4. Test Ideas Responsibly: Experiments must be handled in a way that protects the company and its customers, covering concepts such as security, privacy, ethics, compliance, etc.

Product Delivery Principles

To promote empowerment and innovation, a single, cross-functional product team must be responsible for both discovery and delivery (not separate teams), ensuring continuity.

  1. Small, Frequent, Uncoupled Releases: Leveraging an agile methodology, delivery should consist of short iterative sprints, with each sprint prioritising the important areas to deliver a viable product, always targeting the defined outcome.

  2. Instrumentation: Establish the required technical foundations to observe how the product is used, providing valuable feedback to support continuous improvement.

  3. Monitoring: Embed real-time monitoring at multiple levels to understand the product’s health, prompting short feedback loops that enable the team to proactively identify and rapidly respond to any concerns.

  4. Deployment Infrastructure: Automate as much of the delivery lifecycle as possible, leveraging a standardised CI/CD pipeline to reduce human errors and increase team productivity.

Product Culture Principles

Excessive control is a primary risk factor preventing companies from innovating, growing and excelling, eroding trust and personal value.

  1. Principles over Process: Process is great when both the problem and solution are known. However, the process can impact agility, making teams less responsive to new opportunities and threats, as well as more risk-adverse. These are all barriers to creating great products.

  2. Trust over Control: As promoted by Simon Sinek, product teams can only be empowered when they are trusted, which requires psychological safety, supporting a “speak up” culture without any fear of humiliation or retribution.

  3. Innovation over Predictability: 100% predictability = 0% innovation. Predictability is important only if it delivers the value the company depends on, targeting areas that are highly industrialised or commodity.

  4. Learning over Failure: Failure only occurs when teams neglect the opportunity to learn or fail to apply the learnings to support future initiatives.

Additional detail regarding each product-first principle is outlined in the book TRANSFORMED, by Marty Cagan. I would also recommend The Product Compass, which is an incredible resource for Product Managers.

In the next article, I plan to share my thoughts regarding the key roles and responsibilities required to enable an empowered product team.

strategy product_operating_model silicon_valley_product_group svpg marty_cagan inspired empowered transformed lifeinwork